Association, Comparison and Reconsideration: Fei Xiaotong’s Thesis of “Heaven-Man Unity” and the Anthropological “Ontological Turn”

In this essay, the author engages late Fei Xiaotong’s narrative of " Heaven-Man Unity” in his reconsideration of the recent " ontological” critiques of the natualist non-relational distinction between nature and culture. The author agrees with the reviewed that a " better” anthropology should be envisioned with the relational conception of " person”, the inter-subjective and inter-objective notion of " self ”. However, in consideration of the fact that the " ontological turn”, consisting of varied ethnographic transformations of " animism”, has in fact been a certain return to modern Christian pantheism, the author turns to the subject-object " dynamic convivialism”—discoverable not only in the Book of Change but also in " primitive animatism”—for a new enlightenment. By means of the re-enlivened " old wisdoms of the world”, the author conceptualizes his notion of " human relations in the broad sense of the term”.